Professional skater and Revolution Mother frontman Mike Vallely has been one of my heroes for a long time. As a young teenager, I idolized him. He is an individual who rises in the face of adversity, speaks his mind and is not afraid to be himself in the fickle world of skateboarding. Moreover, Vallely is a guy that you really, really do not want to fuck with. Weve all seen that video from Bam Margeras CKY3 where Vallely beats up four guys at once, but you'd be mistaken to think he was just some scary guy who can throw hands. Hes been skating for 20 years, give or take, hes seen trends come and go, and hes constantly giving back to the fans. Vallely has his own show on Fuse called "Drive", and his band Revolution Mother is similar to falling out of an airplane... into an avalanche and liking it.

SuicideGirls caught up with Vallely to chat about everything from elephants to Elvis, to Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, throwing skateboards and where he does the Ho Ho Street Plant.Garrett Faber: You've been skating for a long time, you've seen a lot of trends come and go, so what do you think about the current state of skateboarding? Especially with "Epicly Later'd" on MTV and Ryan Sheckler, Rob Dyrdek and Bam all having their own shows, it seems skateboarding is really "pop" right now.

Mike Vallely: Yeah, I don't know. I really don't follow it, to be honest with you. I'm aware what's happening, to some extent. Through the years, especially the last five or six years, I've just focused on my own skating and the things that I feel are important and that I value and I've tried to share them with as many people as possible. I've gone the commercial mainstream route to some extent -- I have a TV show. I utilize all of those opportunities to whatever extent I can in order to bring the real spirit of skateboarding forward.I don't relate to the skate scene today. I don't relate to the magazines or the videos, I don't relate to the new skaters, other than the kid on the street who's just starting out... I feel like I still have something to share with that kid. That's where I try to find my way in the skateboard world, to make a connection in that regard. That's why I get out on the road, travel as much as I do and go skate demos. I try to be as many places as possible. That's why I do the TV show on Fuel. That's why I'm still a pro skater. I don't know much about what the pro scene is today [or] if it would necessarily attract me if I were a kid growing up now.

GF: You stand out a lot in the pack... you're really intelligent and open, you've got the blog and you constantly speak your mind. Do you think that helps or hinders you in the skate world?

MV: Yeah, I think I've really stood out in the pack, even from when I was a little kid, before I started skating. When I got into the skateboarding world, what really attracted me about it was the whole do-it-yourself mentality that was skateboarding and punk rock. It was about being an individual, doing your own thing and not following the herd, but that didn't last very long. [Laughs] I still valued those very same things, I refused to change, and very early on I found myself rebelling against the rebels. When the locker room mentality came into play, a herd of guys barreling down the street together, I wasn't interested in that. I started skating to be myself and do my own thing. It was a creative thing; it wasn't a frat boy mentality, it wasn't about "the boys all together." I just didn't vibe on that. I like to be around the guys, I like to be around people, but something weird happens when you get a bunch of guys together. [Laughs]

Almost in spite of it, I had to stay true to myself and strive for my own individuality at every moment, which isn't an easy thing to do and no one really likes that [because] it's confrontational. I've always tried to make my own way, the best I can. I've always stood outside of the skate scene, and I've grown into that role as well. I used to be very uncomfortable with it. As I've gotten older and matured to some extent, I'm very comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am and what I'm about, so I'm going to stand up and be me and live out loud, and not be afraid to do so. I think that confidence and maturity to some extent has sustained my pro career because I haven't been afraid to push forward. All it comes down to is a little bit of balls, and a little bit of guts. You're gonna get slammed along the way; people are gonna put you down, spit in your face, stab you in the back. You get used to that after a while and you go, "Ya know what? Fuck it, Im just gonna keep goin."

GF: Where did the lightning bolt [symbol] come from?

MV: I kind of lifted it from Elvis Presley. About 1996 I went to Graceland for the first time while on a skate tour. I've been an Elvis fan since I was a little kid. At that time I was working on a new pro model board... I had this elephant graphic that I've kind of run into the ground over the years and people were encouraging me to continue to run it into the ground at that time. I was looking for something new, something bold, something iconic. I was at Graceland checking out all the Elvis stuff, and he used the lightning bolt quite a bit in the '70s to signify what he was all about, which was takin care of business in a flash. Throughout the '60s, Elvis was making these horrible movies. In the '70s he went, "Who am I? What am I about? I'm about getting out there, performing and making people happy." He had a lightning bolt on his airplane, necklaces, and rings. I really vibed on it, I dug it. So I put this lightning bolt on my skateboard. At the time my skate career was in the gutter and I was trying to rebuild it. I was starting to rebound and then the board came out with the lightning bolt on it and I started having some real success. So, the lightning bolt symbolizes self-empowerment, belief in self, and I've run it ever since. I eventually got it tattooed on my arms and all that nonsense.

GF: Yeah, that's awesome; I noticed Kat Von D has it on her floor.

MV: Lightning bolts are just cool to begin with; I don't know what her influence is with all that. I definitely vibe on it, man.

GF: What is your relationship like with Kat Von D? How long have you known her? She has that picture of you in her studio.

MV: [Laughs] I haven't even known her that long. I went in and got a tattoo from her about a year ago for the first time and we just kind of clicked. We're into the same things basically, tattoos, punk rock, metal, rock and roll, skateboarding. Everything clicked and we hung out a few times, most of the times we're hanging out she's tattooing me. I got the impression that she knew who I was the first time I went in for a tattoo. I think she follows skateboarding. I don't walk into someplace going, "Yo I'm Mike V!" I got the impression that she was stoked to meet me and tattoo me, and we just clicked.

GF: What was the first tattoo you got from her and what was the last tattoo you got from her?

MV: The first one was on my left hand; it's an anchor with the word "family". Most recently she tattooed portraits of my daughters on my arm.

GF: It's really cool that you're so in touch with your fans.

MV: In the mid-90s when my career was in the gutter and I was trying to rebound, the way I did that was by getting on the road and touring at a very grassroots level. I realized at that time that the magazines weren't trying to help me, no one was trying to put me in a video, and my peers just wanted me to go away. If I started listening to what other people were saying, I might have just evaporated. I went on the road and I took my skating directly to the parking lots, the skate shops, the skate parks, right to someone's hometown. I found out that I still had relevance with real skaters. I started making a connection with kids and other skaters and I realized that the connection is what matters. Not the pedestal that you're on one week, and then off the next. I travel around the world, meet somebody that I've never met before and we have an instant relationship because we both grew up doing the same thing. It's a connection. I meet skaters in Australia, Tokyo, China, Brazil, Russia, Africa -- it doesn't matter where I go, it's instant. I've always valued, cared about and respected that. I think the skaters know that so making myself available to them -- whether it's via the Internet or personal appearance -- being there in a very real way matters and I could never do it any other way, because that's what I know to be true. People are like, "Oh it's cool that you give back." I don't look at it as giving back, I look at it as being righteous.

GF: Where did the elephant come from? I heard the story about people wanting you to put a giant cockroach on your board.

MV: [Laughs] At the time, in '87 every Powell-Peralta skateboard had a skull on it in some fashion [so] I wanted to do something different. I came up with the idea of the elephant when I was watching television. I came across this program about how African Elephants were in danger and being poached for ivory and they were basically in competition with man for land. I couldn't understand how the largest land mammal, this majestic creature the elephant, could be slaughtered this way, so I wanted to put an elephant on my board to kind of remind people about elephants. The first thing the guy at Powell-Peralta wanted to do was make it an elephant skull. I was like, "Elephant skulls don't even look that cool!"

GF: You eventually got the elephant skull.

MV: Yeah, yeah, that happens. [Laughs] The original graphic itself, I definitely had to fight for. It was a pretty radical change in the graphical direction of Powell-Peralta at the time. It's still a pretty classic graphic; I think it's one of the best skate graphics of all time and I'm truly honored to this day to have a board in that lineup, on that team, done by that artist. That's really somethin else man.

GF: You have really great decks; I remember the Animal Farm deck and how it changed the shape of skateboarding.

MV: At the time, it was forward thinking. Skateboarding was changing. What it really came down to -- and I've never even said this before, it just popped in my head just now -- is that the shape of the board was so radical looking at the time that it was a true gamble to put out a pro model board with your name on it, with that shape, let alone the graphic. The graphic was a vegetarian themed graphic; it had funky, fluorescent colors and it was really cartoon-y. The shape and the graphic together were so risky, I don't there's another pro skater that would of done it at the time. I just didn't give a fuck; it was what I wanted to do. I just went for it. Who knew? We thought that this stuff was just disposable that was going to be thrown away [but] now it's a collector's item.

GF: You also had the skateboard with the snake crawling away from the burning city, and you said it was metaphor for skateboarding at the time. If you were going to have one of those social commentary decks again, what message would you put out there?

MV: I don't think I would have a social commentary deck. [Laughs] I don't feel like the skateboard is the canvas anymore for anything important.

GF: Really?

MV: With skateboards now, you slap a name on them, you put a pretty picture on them... it's just about supply and demand. People do leave very artistic stuff on the bottoms of skateboards but I don't think anyone does anything that really matters. It's so big now, the market is so huge... anything you put on a skateboard is just another skateboard that goes out into the market and evaporates and disappears. I think skateboards are more disposable today than they ever were before. Kids ride blank boards more than they ride pro-model graphics. Who cares whats on the bottom of a skateboard anymore? It's just an instrument to do tricks on. I think there should be a revolution and it's up to young skaters coming up today not to except the status quo and make something happen. I'd love to sit back and watch that. The only social commentary that I offer, I haven't found necessary to put on my skateboards anymore. The fact that I have some iconic graphics that represent me and represent individuality, I think that's something. I don't see me putting out a board that's trying to say, or be about, anything anymore. It's pretty watered down at this point. I go a different route for trying to make an impact on the scene and that's by just going out there and skating and being visible.

GF: Did you always abstain from drugs and alcohol?

MV: I've never done any type of drugs. As a young person I definitely purposely did my best to stay away from that scene. I don't know about "experimenting" with alcohol... people drink, ya know? I don't have a problem with having some drinks. As young person... I just saw that if you didn't have anything else going on in your life then drinking was your only focus. That's the way it was when I was growin up -- kids with nothing better to do would get into drugs and alcohol. It seemed so pointless to me. I had skateboarding, music... stuff I cared about. I didn't have time to do any drugs and alcohol. To this day I don't value drinking just for the sake of drinking, just to get bombed out of my mind, I have no use for that.

GF: In an old interview you said that you wanted to get away from that brawler image you received after beating up those four guys in CKY3. Were you successful?

MV: It was a bummer, but what can you do man? I don't care so much about getting away from that image; I just don't want it to be the only thing I'm known for. I have no problem with it; those guys needed to get their asses kicked and I'm glad I did it. I did struggle with it like, "Oh, I shouldn't have done that." I thought circles around it for years and years, but at the end of the day, here today, I don't want to be known for that, but it is a part of my character. I try to keep myself [and my emotions] in check and not do anything stupid. I was in a lawsuit over that... those guys sued me and it was a painful thing to be involved with, dealing with lawyers and all that kind of bullshit. It haunted me, now it's all over with and it is what it is. Four fuckin' idiots picked a fight with me one the wrong night at the wrong place, I handed them their asses and it was over with. If it werent caught on video, no one would even be talkin' about it.

GF: Whats fatherhood like?

MV: It's a daily challenge. [Laughs] It's the best, I love it. I really love moments that, from the outside may seem really mundane and trivial like driving kids to school, or getting them a snack right before bed, that kind of stuff. I cherish all those moments and try to live them to the fullest, there's something about family and having kids. It's hard to explain, it's just something you feel and know, for me it's everything, it kind of ties everything together for me. Having family seems to me like the completion of one's life. It feels right to me, having a wife and kids completes me. I don't know who I'd be with out it, if I'd like myself, or I'd make any sense to me at all.

GF: How do you like playing shows in front of the Warped Tour crowd? Is it the same as skateboarding?

MV: It's different. With the skate audience, I think I have a proven track record of delivering, people come out to see me. On the Warped Tour, we were fighting for our audience every day. We're wrangling up all these emo kids to come and see us play rock and roll. Sometimes they're into it and sometimes they're not. I never get nervous before music or skateboarding, but there's definitely an intensity that's there, and a desire to go as hard as I can no matter what, no matter who's watching or what their impression of it is. With my skating and my music I just go as hard as I can, all the way, full tilt. That's all I can really do, I can't worry about the audience aspect of it. If there's any nervousness, it's a good kind of nervousness -- the kind that gets you pumped up and riled up and ready to go.

GF: What was it like being a video game character in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater?

MV: I don't know, I guess when it first happened it was like, "Whoa! No Way!" There are things that become measuring sticks of whos who and whats what. In the mid-90s it was the pro model shoe -- if you got the shoe that meant you were somebody of some significance. When I first got in the video game, it wasn't so much that I cared about being in a video game, I don't even play video games. I knew that being in the game had significance to it, a lot of people are going to play this game, a lot of people are going to see it. The fact that I'm in it with these other guys, shoulder to shoulder, says that I belong at that level. I use those opportunities to be me, to bring what I want to bring to the forefront. I want to go on the frontlines and be about something. I don't want to go on the frontlines and win a gold medal, or do a cool stunt, or be the best looking guy, or have the coolest style -- I want to go on the frontlines and be about punk rock music and skateboarding. The video game was a measuring stick but it was also an opportunity to get my message out there.

GF: I remember the first time, you were a secret character... You throw your deck at the camera, you've got the elbow drop and the flamingo, it was so intense.

MV: I just went to Neversoft, where they make the game... I saw what the other guys were doing and said, "I want to do something violent and really aggressive." We just came up with this goofy and funny, aggro stuff.

GF: How did you feel when Big Brother magazine closed down?

MV: Vindicated. In the early '90s they had an article called "Most Washed Up Skater" and I think I was like number two on the list behind Tony Hawk.

GF: [Laughs]

MV: Yeah, pretty ironic huh? Through the years I've had a love-hate relationship with them. The last interview I ever did with Big Brother, they were trying to cut into me during the interview and I just said, "Ya know whats funny? You can say whatever you want, but I'm going to be around much longer than your fuckin magazine." Ed Templeton was interviewing me, but he was asking me questions that Jeff Tremaine and all the other guys wrote. I think I actually said, "Jeff Tremaine, I'm going to be around a lot longer than this fuckin magazine." Once you put something like that out there people are like, "Oh Shit!" I stopped really caring, I don't read the magazines. I understand why Big Brother was of significance to people, the generation that was coming up at that time valued it but I was already over it. I don't read magazines today, they all get sent to my house, I barely give them a glance and they get put in a pile.

GF: Do you still do that letter column for Skateboarding Magazine?

MV: No, I haven't done that since Bush got re-elected. I got fired for saying some negative stuff about George W. Bush.

GF: No way!

MV: I was telling people not to vote for Bush, and I guess that wasn't good advice. [Laughs]

GF: [Laughs] Would you ever write a book?

MV: I don't know what it would be about, [laughs] I mean, perhaps. I'm always writing, but I've never been focused enough on anything to say I would write a book about it.

GF: Would you put an autobiography out?

MV: No, I'm not so interested in that. I don't really care about, "I was born here, and then I did this, and these are all my achievements!" That's all a bunch of hogwash to me; I really don't give a shit. I think what would be of significance and if I did an autobiography, would be from my ages 14 to 16 when I first started skateboarding and what my life was like at that time. I think it would be more of a universal story as opposed to "And then I turned Pro!" My true success wasn't turning pro, my true success was getting in touch with me, and discovering my own individuality, the fact that I turned pro and made a career in skateboarding is just the cherry on top of my whipped cream sundae. The important thing is finding a passion and finding something that matters to you and going for it. If you make it or not, it doesn't matter, as long as you go for it.

GF: I remember you wrote about the eS Game of Skate, and how you thought it was bullshit because they threw on so many rules. Do you still feel that way?

MV: Yeah, I'm still pissed about that. I can't get over that, I know I should just get the fuck over it, but I can't, I hate those motherfuckers. I hate that whole elitist attitude in skateboarding, it's bullshit, and Ill be against it till the day I die. [Laughs]

GF: They had all those rules but no one talked about it except you.

MV: You know why no one talked about it? It's because Eric Koston is God to all these people, originally it was called "Eric Koston's Game Of Skate" and eS Shoes was super happening at the time, with the elite tech team. So they come up with this game of skate and they come up with all these rules so people like me and Rodney Mullen and other freaks can't come in a skate it out and do our thing. The rules were basically you could only do ollie oriented flip tricks, so if you wanted to do some caspers or jump up on a rail or do stuff no one else could do, because Rodney Mullen could slaughter anyone in a real game of skate, you couldn't. They made the rules really restrictive, I mean Rodney could still do all those flip tricks, eS just watered skateboarding down.

GF: [Laughs] Do you and Rodney Mullen ever hang out? Do you ever call him up like, "Yo, let's get some steak and potatoes?"

MV: [Laughs] I think highly of him and I respect him, but I never really hang out with him.

GF: Would you ever run for President of The United States?

MV: Hell no.

GF: Do you think you could beat up Chuck Norris?

MV: Yes.

Revolution Mother is on tour now. For tour dates and more information on Mike Vallely go to www.revolutionmother.com and www.mikevallely.com

love the interview I remember having a pic of him and his gfriend from thrasher like in 89'. always one of the guys I tried to emulate when I skated, oh and I like the fact he doesnt put up with shit, no one should have to.